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Santander goes live with SWIFT gpi

The leading retail and commercial bank, Santander, has gone live on SWIFT’s global payments innovation (gpi) service in Spain, the UK, Argentina and Poland. It will go live in Chile and Mexico before the end of the year, with further countries planned for 2019.

With SWIFT gpi, Santander can now offer a rapid cross-border payments service – with real-time payments tracking and transparency on bank fees and foreign exchange rates.

The widespread adoption of SWIFT gpi has been driven by demand for faster, more transparent cross-border payments. Nearly half of gpi payments are credited within 30 minutes, many within seconds – and almost 100% within 24 hours. The service also enables end-clients to track the status of their payments from end-to-end, and provides an unprecedented level of visibility into each payment – including information about each bank in the payment chain and any fees that have been deducted.

Since the launch of SWIFT gpi in 2017, Santander and SWIFT have worked closely on a global project with local implementations geared to the requirements of customers in each of the geographies in which Santander is present.

“For us, SWIFT gpi represents a good opportunity to improve the experience provided to our clients in their international payments, making the process faster and more transparent while simultaneously making our internal processes more efficient. We are looking forward to advancing in the following phases in order to achieve the best possible service in our payments offering,” said Eva Bueno Velayos, GTB Head, Santander España.

“In simple words, transparency brings trust, and trust brings longstanding fruitful relationships with our clients; this is why we love gpi. It is a big step forward for the payments industry and I have no doubt that Santander will continue to lead this transformation by delivering transparency, trust and the best customer experience to our clients.” said Bart Timmermans, GTB Head, Santander UK.

“We believe that through this initiative the banking community is dramatically improving the international payments service to meet client needs, from Manners to Individuals, facilitating reconciliation processes, providing greater efficiencies in managing cash positions and thus creating value to the whole system. Our roadmap not only includes the extension of the gpi network throughout Santander Group, but also the new gpi services that will enhance the functionalities of this new standard,” said Agustín Mariani, GTB Head, Santander Rio.

“We are delighted to count Santander among the major international banks that are live on SWIFT gpi. By working together to roll out gpi across multiple geographies in parallel, most of Santander’s customers are already able to reap the benefits of what is fast becoming the new industry norm for cross-border payments,” said Alain Raes, Chief Executive EMEA & Asia Pacific, SWIFT.

Javier Pérez-Tasso, Chief Executive, Americas & UK, SWIFT said: “Santander’s go-live on gpi marks an important milestone in the expansion of the service globally. The bank’s extensive network of clients can now benefit from fast, traceable and transparent cross-border payments – speeding up their supply chains and reducing risk. We warmly welcome Santander on board and look forward to continued expansion of their gpi coverage across countries and corridors.”

To date, more than 270 financial institutions around the world have signed up to SWIFT gpi, with over USD 100 billion in SWIFT gpi payments being sent daily across 600+ country corridors. Following the SWIFT community’s recent endorsement of global gpi adoption, SWIFT gpi will be the standard for all cross-border payments by the end of 2020.